Hamlet Questions
AP Literature & Composition
R. Mitchell
Answer the following questions in complete, grammatically correct sentences. Provide textual support for your answers.
Act I, scene i
1.
2.
How does Shakespeare begin the play with an immediate sense of suspense?
How does the reader/audience know this ghost is not a hallucination?
Act I, scene ii
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
What evidence of wrongdoing or corruption is evident in Claudius’ opening speech?
Compare Claudius’ treatment of Laertes with his treatment of Hamlet?
What is the significance of Claudius’ denying Hamlet permission to return to Wittenberg?
What aspect of Hamlet’s concept of or desire for death is revealed in his first soliloquy?
What important metaphor is introduced in Hamlet’s soliloquy that will be developed later in the play?
Act I, scene iii
8.
9.
Explain the reasons that Laertes and Polonius give Ophelia to convince her not to trust Hamlet’s love.
Marcellus states, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” What does he mean?
Act I, scene iv
10. What does Hamlet mean when he says, “The time is out of joint”?
Act II, scene i
11. What is ironic about Polonius’ attempt to learn about Laertes’ life in Paris?
12. How does the episode of Hamlet in Ophelia’s closet promise to contribute to the overall calamity of the tragic plot?
Act II, scene ii
13. What effect is created by the scenes between Hamlet and Polonius being in prose?
14. What are some of the slang expressions and puns Hamlet uses in his first exchange with Polonius? Why are they
significant?
15. Why are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hesitant to admit that they are in Elsinore because the king and queen sent for
them?
16. What is unusual about the player’s monologue about the Fall of Troy?
Act III, scene i
17. What does Claudius admit to himself (and the audience) about his crime?
18. What metaphor does Hamlet use in his “To be or not to be” speech to express his developing understanding of death?
How does he further develop this metaphor?
19. Explain the ambiguity of the nunnery scene.
20. What is the main thrust of Hamlet’s diatribe against Ophelia?
Act III, scene ii
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
Why does Hamlet trust and admire Horatio?
How does Hamlet’s speech pattern change when the others enter the room to view the play? Why?
Why does Hamlet speak to Ophelia in such vulgar terms?
What does Gertrude’s reaction to the play indicate?
Explain the metaphor of the recorder.
Explain the allusion to Nero in Hamlet’s closing soliloquy.
Act III, scene iii
27. How has the play-within-a-play changed Hamlet’s situation and influenced the action of the play?
28. How does Polonius’ spying on the scene between Hamlet and Gertrude indicate a change in Gertrude’s status?
29. Why doesn’t Hamlet kill Claudius when he has the opportunity?
Act III, scene iv
30. Explain the ambiguity and wordplay between Hamlet and his mother in their exchange at the beginning of this scene.
31. What aspect of Gertrude and Claudius’ marriage still clearly bothers Hamlet the most?
32. What is the significance of the ghost’s second appearance?
Act IV, scene i
33. How is this scene ambiguous regarding Gertrude’s “conversion” from the previous scene?
Act IV, scene ii
34. What is the apparent purpose of this brief scene?
Act IV, scene iii
35. How does this scene advance Hamlet’s developing awareness of death?
Act IV, scene iv
36. What is the purpose of this scene?
Act IV, scene v
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
What important information does Claudius reveal?
What characterizes Ophelia’s madness, and why does it take this particular form?
How is Ophelia a foil for Hamlet?
Describe Laertes’ reaction to his father’s murder and explain how he is a foil for Hamlet.
To whom does Ophelia give each of the flowers, and what does each symbolize?
Act IV, scenes vi-vii
42.
43.
44.
45.
What does the news that Hamlet reveals to Horatio in the letter reveal about Hamlet’s character?
How does this episode illustrate the role of coincidence in Shakespearean tragedy?
Why does Claudius tell Laertes that he will not kill Hamlet himself?
In Gertrude’s description of Ophelia’s death, what suggests that Ophelia’s drowning was a suicide? an accident?
Act V, scene i
46. What is the significance of each of the skulls that the gravedigger uncovers, and how do they contribute to Hamlet’s
understanding of death?
47. How does the entrance of Ophelia’s funeral procession continue this evolution?
48. What does the fight in the grave foreshadow?
49. Why is this scene in prose rather than verse?
50. How do Hamlet and the gravedigger view the sociological implications of death differently? Why?
Act V, scene ii
51. What is ironic about the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?
52. How does Shakespeare establish Hamlet’s nobility?
53. How does the impending duel with Laertes complete Hamlet’s concept of death that has been developing throughout
the play?
54. Why does Hamlet apologize to Laertes? Is he sincere and how do you know?
55. Why does the play end with such bloodshed and death?
56. What is the last line’s significance?